Barack Obama has been elected as president of the most powerful nation in the world that since the end of the Second World War has been the bulwark of freedom against its infernal enemies, i.e., the former Soviet Union and its allies. In the twentieth-first century Western civilization is threatened by a new implacable and irreconcilable enemy, fanatical Islam; and the USA is the only nation in the world that can defeat this foe. But president Obama has already failed both tests of “knowing thy enemy,” and as a sagacious strong respectful leader. He has weakened America both before the eyes of its friends and allies and, most dangerously, its enemies.

The nations of Eastern Europe are rapidly losing their trust toward the US that the latter will protect and defend their interests and security, since Obama’s withdrawal of the missile defence shield from Poland and Czechoslovakia and his concessions to the Russians. And the enemies of America, such as Iran and its multiple terrorist proxies are heartened and have increased their confidence that in Obama they have before them a giant eunuch who is incapable and unwilling to use force, even as a last resort, against them. Since Obama has replaced America’s superpower ‘Jupiterian’ bolt diplomacy with olive branches toward them.

The “dangerous scenarios,” of which you are concerned with, are already in their incubatory stage: a nuclear armed Iran that would start a proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region with all the great dangers that would issue from such proliferation, especially in a region that is replete with the votaries of fanatical Islam. Thus to your question what kind of advice one would give to Obama in such an impending crisis, it would be the most heavily ‘armed advice’ that would fall on his shoulders. But Obama has neither the spine nor the balls to carry such heavy advice on his morally rickety frame, and least of all bring it to fruition as a last resort. Thus any strong advice given to a congenitally weak president would be a barren exercise.

Barack Obama was, is, and will remain an appeaser of radical Islam, as it is a constituent part of his weak character and more dangerously of his effete leadership. Like a fearful child he avoids his fears by hiding his face under the bed-sheets. This is clearly illustrated by his fudging of the word “jihadist” with its inherent fanatical murderous action –which he fears to admit– by changing it to the less fearsome one of “workplace violence,” his description of the Fort Hood massacre, whose jihadist perpetrator Dr Nidal Hasan was sentenced to death today. It is by such changes and meaningless laughable words within the scenario of terrorism that the commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation purports to fight the existential threat that radical Islam poses to Western civilization. A black comedy ham is the occupier of the White House.

It will have even bigger consequences if it succeeds by wishful thinking. Rapprochement in itself is meaningless unless there is clear and unambiguous understanding and agreement between the parties about the conditions of such rapprochement. It would be a mistake to deduce from the rhetorically conciliatory statements of President Rouhani that Iran has abandoned its desire to acquire nuclear weapons. And to differentiate himself from the holocaustian statements of his predecessor, Ahmadinejad, is hardly an indication that the new regime is repudiating its clandestine goal to develop a nuclear weapon. Only if Rouhani allows open and rigorous inspections in all areas of Iran where Western intelligence cogently suspects the secret development of a nuclear weapon will the experts be convinced that Iran has changed tack in regard to its nuclear arsenal.

It is more probable, because Rouhani perceives a weak president in the United States, he will be exploiting that weakness to achieve Iran’s historic and Islamic aim to enter the nuclear club by persuading Obama about the peaceful purpose of Iran’s nuclear build-up. Rouhani is aware that Obama needs and desires a suspension of tensions so he will have the excuse to take all options off the table and thus as an incompetent and effete president tranquilize himself by false hopes. And Rouhani and his advisors know, that this détente can be achieved on promissory notes that will never be cashed. Thus by providing Obama the confidence that he can come to a reasonable agreement with Iran, Rouhani achieves two diplomatic goals. (1) He defers USA action from resolving speedily and decisively the issue of nuclear weapons by creating the euphoria that this matter can be resolved by prolonged negotiations, a dilatoriness that Obama is most happy to accept as he desires to push the hard options, if they are needed, in the future ahead with the hope that they will never be used, and which also suits Rouhani perfectly as it will give Iran more time to achieve its strategic goal to build the bomb. And (2) weakening Israel’s resolve to unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear installations, if other Western states are found to be wanting in stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear armaments, by isolating Israel from its major ally, the USA, and from other Western nations, and thus making it more difficult for Israel to strike.

It is for this reason that Clemons should be more restrained in his optimism of the opportunity of reaching a rapprochement with Iran when a more sinister and malign opportunity could be hidden behind the apparently benign talk of Rouhani.

In view of the removal of President Morsi by the army responding to the call of the majority of Egyptians for his ousting, I’m republishing the following essay that was written in February 2011, that foreshadowed and tried to prevent by a proposal of mine the fall of the country to radical Islam, for the readers of this blog.

By Con George-KotzabasisFebruary 08, 2011

Swallowing victory in one gulp may choke one.

Egypt, not unexpectedly for those who have read history and can to a certain extent adumbrate its future course, as one of the offsprings (Tunisia was the first one) of the rudimentary Democratic paradigm that was established in Iraq by the U.S. ‘invasion’, has a great potential of strengthening this paradigm and spreading it to the whole Arab region. The dominoes that started falling in Iraq under a democratic banner backed by the military power of the Coalition forces are now falling all over the Arab territories dominated by authoritarian and autocratic governments. The arc that expands from Tunisia to Iran and contains all other Arab countries has the prospect and promise of becoming the arc of Democracy. But Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty in physics also and equally applies to politics. For one cannot predict, especially in a revolutionary situation, and more so, when it is combined with fledgling and immature political parties that is the present political configuration in Egypt as well as of the rest of the Arab world due to the suppression of political parties by their authoritarian regimes, whether the dominoes will fall on the side of Democracy or on the side of Sharia radical Islam. This is why the outcome of the current turmoil in Egypt is of so paramount geopolitical importance. And that is why the absolute necessity of having a strong arm at the helm that will navigate the presently battered State of Egypt toward the safe port of Democracy is of the utmost importance. Contrariwise, to leave the course of these momentous events in the hands of the spontaneous and totally inexperienced leaders of the uprising against Mubarak is a recipe of irretrievable disaster. For that can bring the great possibility, if not ensure, that the dominoes in the whole Arab region will be loaded to fall on the side of the extremists of Islam. And this is why in turn for the U.S. and its allies in the war against global terror, it is of the uttermost strategic importance to use all their influence and prowess to veer Egypt toward a Democratic outcome.

One is constrained to build with the materials at hand. If the only available materials one has to build a structure in an emergency situation are bricks and mortar he will not seek and search for materials of a stronger fibre, such as steel, by which he could build a more solid structure. Presently in Egypt, the army is the material substance of ‘bricks and mortar’ by which one could build a future Democratic state. It would be extremely foolish therefore to search for a stronger substance that might just be found in civil society or among the protesters of Tahrir Square. That would be politically a wild goose chase at a time when the tectonic plates of the country are moving rapidly toward a structural change in the body politic. The army therefore is the only qualified, disciplined organization that can bring an orderly transitional change on the political landscape of the country. Moreover, the fact that it has the respect of the majority of the Egyptian people and that it has been bred and nourished on secular and nationalist principles, ensures by its politically ‘synthetic nature’ that it will not go against the wishes of the people for freedom and democracy, that it will be a bulwark against the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that it will be prepared to back the change from autocracy to democracy, if need be, with military force and thus steer the country away from entering the waters of anarchy and ‘permanent’ political instability that could push Egypt to fall into the lap of the supporters of Allahu Akbar.

The task of the army or rather its political representatives will be to find the right people endowed with political adeptness, experience, imagination, and foresight from a wide pool of political representation that would also include members of the old regime who will serve not only for their knowledge in the affairs of state but also as the strong link to the chain of the anchor that will prevent any possibility that the new political navigation of the country will go adrift. The former head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman will play a pivotal role in this assembly of political representation which will not exclude members of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is of vital importance however is that this new political process will not be violently discontinued from the old regime. While room will be made to ensconce the new representatives of the people to government positions, this will not happen at the expense of crowding out old government hands. The only person that will definitely be left out will be Hosni Mubarak and some of his conspicuous cronies. And Mubarak himself has already announced that neither he nor his son will be candidates in the presidential elections in September. The call of the Tahrir Square protesters to resign now has by now become an oxymoron by Mubarak’s announcement not to stand as president in the next election. Further it is fraught with danger as according to the Constitution if he resigns now elections for the presidency must be held after sixty days. That means a pot- pourri of candidates for president will come forward without the people having enough time either to evaluate their competence nor their political bona fide and might elect precipitatingly without critical experience and guidance a ‘dunce’ for president, an Alexander Kerensky in the form of Mohamed Al Baradei, that will open the passage to the Islamic Bolsheviks. To avoid this likely danger I’m proposing the following solution that in my opinion would be acceptable to all parties in this political melee.

The Vice President Omar Suleiman as representative of the armed forces, to immediately set up a committee under his chairmanship that will comprise members of the variable new and old political organizations of the country, whose task will be to appoint the members of a ‘shadow government’ whose function in turn will be to put an end to the protests that could instigate a military coup d’état , to make the relevant amendments to the constitution that will guide the country toward democracy, and to prepare it for the presidential elections in September. The members of this shadow government will be a medley of current holders of government that would include the most competent of all, Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister, who was sacked by Mubarak as a scapegoat, and of the old and new political parties that emerged since the bouleversement against Mubarak. The executive officer of this ‘government in the wings’ will be Vice President Suleiman, who, with the delegated powers given to him by the present no more functional president Mubarak will be the real president during this interim period. Finally, the members of this shadow government will have a tacit agreement that their political parties will support candidates for president in the September elections who were selected by consensus among its members.

The ‘establishment’ of such a shadow government might be the political Archimedean point that would move Egypt out of the crisis and push it toward democracy.

I’m republishing this short piece that illustrates the diplomatic scarcity in international relations that is the inexorable feature of the Obama administration.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons and Ben Katcher are using the ‘shamanistic’ art, the art of a conjurer, to turn the limits of imagination into “the limits of American power.” The “aborted attempt” of the Obama administration to “persuade the Israelis to enact a “settlement freeze”, has nothing to do with US power limits but with lack of imagination and political insight on the part of Obama and the State Department not to foresee the political implausibility of trying to impose such a doltish demand on the Netanyahu government. It’s a dismal failure of policy and not a limit of American power as Clemons and Levy in their conjurers’ role aver.

As for Daniel Levy’s ”asymmetries of power,” WigWag’s post is instructive and unassailable in its historical logic. All defeated nations in wars were due to asymmetries of power.

This is old fogy strategic thinking on the part of a former National Security advisor. For any nation that is already fighting its enemy by means of military operations to abandon the latter and open instead the door of negotiations and diplomacy, as Brzezinski proposes, is to admit defeat, as one would have to negotiate now with a more emboldened and confident enemy from a position of weakness. In such conditions of military “surrendering”, especially to a religiously inspired fanatic enemy, it would be utterly foolish to consider and believe that such a nation, in this case America, could achieve any of its initial goals through diplomacy, other than its conditions of “surrender”, is to make a mockery of the art of Talleyrand

And to accuse McCaine that he proposes for Iraq 100 years of war “until victory”, is a blatant and shameful lie and stains indelibly the intellectual integrity of Brzezinski.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

“Within reality there is a senseless craving for unreality.”Robert Musil

In the dangerous times Western civilization and its people face by the present and looming attacks of the irreconcilable implacable holy warriors of Islam, President Obama true to his campaign promise is, at least initially, replacing the hard power of the previous administration that kept the terrorists at bay from attacking America again with the soft power of diplomacy. The president has decided in his wisdom to sheath the sword of former President Bush, which he considers to be a blunt instrument of foreign policy, and unsheathe the paper knife of diplomacy to deal with the prolonged Israeli Palestinian conflict and the new drawn-out conflict of the U.S. and its allies with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan which is spilling over the borders of Pakistan. His appointment of two high-powered envoys—and more to come in other regions of raging or impending conflict—for the Middle East and Pakistan-Afghanistan, former senator George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke respectively, puts flesh on this ‘skeleton’ of diplomacy which the new president hopes will resolve these up till now intractable issues in the above regions. And simultaneously restore the love and respect of the world for the United States that were lost during the Bush administration with its horrendous, immoral, and unilateral undiplomatic actions in its foreign policy, embodied in the illegal and foolish war in Iraq, that tarnished the reputation of the U.S. so badly as a prudent temperate peace loving nation.

President Obama strongly believes, as he made it clear during his campaign, that America by living on its principles and values and exemplifying these in its actions is the way to mollify a recalcitrant world that believes wrongly that the U.S. is a brutal power, as an outcome of the lawless and immoral misdeeds of the Bush administration. Hence Obama in his cum-sacerdotal role by cleansing America’s Soul from the wicked ‘footprints’ that the heavy boots and missteps of the Texan left in so many parts of the world will be reviving the moral and material strength of America at which the rest of the world will gape with awe at this miraculous transformation, with the corollary, that the latter once again will graciously accept American leadership. All of them, needless to say, laudable aims in the moral sphere of politics but the question remains to what extent, if any, these aims will impact and affect the sphere of realpolitik.

This expansion of diplomacy and its more direct engagement in the hot spots of the world by the new administration is widely acclaimed by the liberal ‘smart set’ in the U.S. and their no less smart cousins in Europe. To them Obama’s initiative brings the “right balance between diplomacy and war” and wisely distances himself from the brazen and grossly stupid policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. In their spiritual euphoria however they miss the cognitive fact that an abstraction such as “the right balance between diplomacy and war,” cannot impact upon the concreteness of a particular situation and on the kind of enemies one is dealing with. One cannot weigh geopolitical issues on a grocer’s scale by putting in one side of the scale diplomacy and in the other war. On such issues the scale is never at a balance and is ever in a state of continuous disequilibrium. It depends on the political principles the military strength and the character of one’s enemy whether one might use more effectively either diplomacy or war or a combination of both to achieve peace with one’s foe. Therefore the liberal nostrum of the “right balance…” is an abstract entity with no effectiveness in the realm of geopolitics.

Furthermore, it’s prerequisite in all conflict situations, especially prolonged ones, for a commander-in-chief to know thy enemy if one would have a chance to defeat him, as the famous Chinese military strategist Sun Zi stated. The deep knowing of one’s enemy is a ‘unilateral’ knowledge that regrettably does not spread in too many heads of States. Only on those leaders and their close advisors who are aware of the kind of enemy they are confronting falls the absolute responsibility and burden to deal expeditiously and decisively with such an enemy. This is why diplomacy in so many cases in the past has failed to pull together a set of allies to confront a common enemy. As most of these purported allies lack the insight to see the future dangers that will be surrounding their nations from this common irreconcilable foe. Hence, predictably, the responsibility of taking military action, when all diplomatic overtures have failed, against a dangerous opponent falls on the shoulders of those leaders who are endowed with political and strategic insight, and ironically these leaders with the knack of statesmanship in their swift decisions and unilateral and preemptive actions, who are the real defenders of their nations, are slanderously condemned as warmongers as a result of the lack of strategic depth of other leaders and the deeper lack of knowledge and understanding of the masses of the responsibilities of statecraft.

The principle of the force of knowledge and its irreplaceable value in politics can be illustrated by Newton’s law of gravity: The force of gravity is proportional to the mass of a planet and inversely proportional to the square of the distance from its centre, which is the Sun. Likewise, the force of knowledge is proportional to the mass of the intelligence of a political leadership and inversely proportional to the square of the distance from its centre, which is geopolitics. Therefore the closer a leadership is to the ‘Sun’ of geopolitics the greater its knowledge to identify correctly a menacing enemy and the kind of enemy one is fighting. And let us not be misunderstood! We are not talking about infallible absolute knowledge which is not within the grasp of human beings, but relative knowledge, which is applicable to a particular political and strategic situation, not however with absolute certainty.

A concrete demonstration of the above argument was the situation with Iraq prior, during, and after the war. The Bush administration used and exhausted all avenues of diplomacy in the UN with its European allies Russia and China to take hard effective diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein, since all of their intelligences unshakably believed that the latter was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had the scientific infrastructure in place to develop nuclear ones, yet it was unable to persuade them in taking this action forcing thus the U.S. and its willing allies the UK, Australia, and some smaller European nations in invading Iraq. And one must not be maliciously forgetful that when Bush started the war he had the support of more than 80 per cent of Americans behind him as he was able to persuade them in the aftermath of 9/11 that the invasion was interrelated to the war against global terror and the latter could not be defeated without either the diplomatic or military defeat of its state sponsors. As we well know this support was dissipated as a result of not finding WMD which the liberal media ignominiously presented that the war was a product of lies when it well knew that the misinformation on the weapons issued from faulty intelligence. And it would not be long before these ‘lies’ were connected to the hated Watergate lies of Nixon and soon embedded into the contemporaneous American psyche as Iraqgate. Moreover the grave error of the Bush administration of ‘shifting’ the ground of the war from its original position of being part and parcel of the war against global terror onto the ‘idealistic’ ground of bringing and building democracy in Iraq further eroded public support for the war. It was obvious that Americans were not prepared to support a war whose aims had changed from the security of their homeland from future deadly terrorist attacks to the idealistic goal of building democracy in Iraq, especially when the war took a bad turn with heavy American casualties with no victory sign at the end of the road—although this was to change with the new strategy of the Surge and its savvy implementation by General Petraeus—and a most expensive war to boot.

Saddam of course was not connected to the attack of 9/11. But he had a strategic interest, seeing the rise of al-Qaeda, to win over its adherents and use them as proxies, as Iran presently does with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, for his political ambitions and in his irreversible confrontation with the United States. That is why his intelligence agents from early on during the domicile of al-Qaeda in Sudan had contact with its higher echelons and provided training to some of its foot-soldiers in Iraq itself. Al Zarqawi himself, the future leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan was domiciled in Iraq before the ousting of Saddam and was hospitalized and treated for his injuries sustained in Afghanistan. On the issue of the WMD Saddam might have had them destroyed but it would be foolish to believe that he had not in place the scientific apparatus and the scientists to develop them rapidly once the sanctions of the UN were lifted. Saddam was too focused in his ambition to be the leader of the Arab world to have given up the acquisition of WMD and indeed nuclear ones that were a prerequisite to consummate his ambition. Moreover, knowing that his arch enemy and competitor in the region Shiite Iran was in the process of developing nuclear weapons, he himself would have given them up. To have believed in the latter would have been to believe that the brutal dictator by a miraculous saintly intervention was transformed into a disciple of the Dalai Lama.

For all the above reasons the ousting of Saddam was fully justified despite all the mistakes of the Bush administration in the prosecution of the war during the insurgency which once they were promptly corrected by the new strategy of the Surge they reversed a coming defeat of the Americans into a surprising impending victory. A victory that the liberal smart set still blindly denies. But more importantly, the defeat of al Qaeda and its sundry jihadists in Iraq could be the pronunciamento of the forthcoming defeat of global terror, providing the present administration of Obama does not step-down from the strong resolve and determination of the previous administration to prosecute the war against this deadly irreconcilable enemy until total victory.

Will Obama Deflate America’s Pragmatic Victory in Iraq by inflating The Moral Standing of his Administration?

After this rather long but necessary digression we must return back to President Obama, as his policies in the realm of foreign affairs will be critical and decisive in strengthening or weakening the United States as the sole superpower and its ability in dealing both with its deadly enemies and its full of reservations and often recalcitrant allies for the reasons we mentioned above. His first actions however of closing Guantanamo Bay and the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in sixteen months are the first blurred signs that his presidency will be enfeebling America’s power in handling the great and inexorable dangers rising from the irreconcilable apocalyptic forces of Islam. The Commander-in-Chief who met his CENTCOM commander on the ground General David Petraeus supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates at an Oval Office meeting on January 21 was not persuaded by the argument of Petraeus and Gates, to the chagrin of the latter, that Obama would have to back down from his campaign pledge to pull out all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months or risk “an eventual collapse in Iraq” with his withdrawal policy. Thus President Obama on the dogmatic moral precept about the wrongness of the war in Iraq is rejecting the advice of his general on theground and is willing to squander and jeopardize the great pragmatic victory US forces achieved in Iraq over al-Qaeda and the al-Sadrist militias. And to his everlasting ignominy he will be known in history as the only commander-in-chief who withdrew his troops from a crucial battle against global terror when these same troops under their capable Generals Petraeus and Odierno were winning the war against it and solidifying their victory; a victory moreover that shows the way and heralds the defeat of all other jihadists in this borderless war on terror. That President Obama would be willing to sacrifice this great strategic victory of jihadists in Iraq on the altar of his morals is breathtaking.

If you have a president whose guiding principles about war and peace are emanating from moral precepts then such president does not deserve to be the leader of a great nation whose paramountcy of strategic military power is pivotal to the order of the world. In a Hobbesian world of bellum omniun contra omnes, unless President Obama has the wisdom and the strength of character to be at times like the “Feudal Knights” in full armour “who made literal mincemeat of their enemies, leaving the clergy to handle the morals,” to quote the great Austrian writer Robert Musil, he will weaken America’s will and power to confront and defeat its implacable enemies.

But his predilection to appoint envoys in the hot spots of the world, where in most cases the arbiter is military force, in the hope that diplomacy and the use of ‘soft power’ will reconcile irreconcilable foes, reveal that President Obama will be neither a wise nor strong leader but the embodiment of Jimmy Carter who will have just enough strength to break the peanuts that the latter was farming. And despite the fact that as president he will be orbiting close to the Sun of geopolitics he will be unable to “know thy enemy” and see his ferocious visage as an outcome of his lack of nerve and debilitating politically moral passions.

For the sake of America and Western civilization and its out posts, one can only hope that his top close advisors have greater insight more mettle and less moral fervour than President Obama and will imbue his administration with these qualities that are the sine qua non of statecraft. As the danger to civilized societies will not be eliminated until the ‘serpent’ of statesmanship has terror in its belly.